Jackdaws

Soon after midday they reached Sainte-Cécile. Flick noted the sudden miraculous quiet that always fell on French streets at the stroke of noon, as the people turned their attention to the first serious meal of the day. She drove to Antoinette’s building. A pair of tall wooden doors, half-open, led to the inner courtyard. Paul leaped out of the van and opened the doors, Flick drove in, and Paul closed the doors behind her. Now the van, with its distinctive legend, could not be seen from the street.

“Come when I whistle,” Flick said, and she jumped out. She went to Antoinette’s door while the others waited in the van. Last time she had knocked on this door, eight days and a lifetime ago, Michel’s aunt Antoinette had hesitated to answer, jumpy on account of the gunfire from the square, but today she came right away. She opened the door, a slim middle-aged woman in a stylish but faded yellow cotton dress. She looked blankly at Flick for a moment: Flick still had on the dark wig. Then recognition dawned. “You!” she said. A look of panic came over her face. “What do you want?”

Flick whistled to the others, then pushed Antoinette back inside. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re going to tie you up so the Germans will think we forced you.”

“What is this?” Antoinette said shakily

“I’ll explain in a moment. Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

The others came in and Ruby closed the apartment door. They went into Antoinette’s kitchen. A meal was laid out on the table: black bread, a salad of shredded carrots, a heel of cheese, a wine bottle without a label. Antoinette said again, “What is this?”

“Sit down,” Flick said. “Finish your lunch.”

She sat down, but she said, “I can’t eat.”

“It’s very simple,” Flick said. “You and your ladies are not going to clean the château tonight… we are.”

She looked baffled. “How will that happen?”

“We’re going to send notes to each of the women on duty tonight, telling them to come here and see you before they go to work. When they arrive, we will tie them up. Then we will go to the château instead of them.”

“You can’t, you don’t have passes.”

“Yes, we do.”

“How… ?” Antoinette gasped. “You stole my pass! Last Sunday. I thought I had lost it. I got into the most terrible trouble with the Germans!”

“I’m sorry you got into trouble.”

“But this will be worse—you’re going to blow the place up!” Antoinette began to moan and rock. “They’ll blame me, you know what they’re like, we’ll all be tortured.”

Flick gritted her teeth. She knew that Antoinette could be right. The Gestapo might easily kill the real cleaners just in case they had had something to do with the deception. “We’re going to do everything we can to make you look innocent,” she said. “You will be our victims, the same as the Germans.” All the same, there remained a risk, Flick knew.

“They won’t believe us,” Antoinette moaned. “We might be killed.”

Flick hardened her heart. “Yes,” she said. “That’s why it’s called a war.”

CHAPTER 48

MARLES WAS A small town to the east of Reims, where the railway line began its long climb into the mountains on its way to Frankfurt, Stuttgart, and Nuremberg. The tunnel just beyond the town carried a constant stream of supplies from the home country to the German forces occupying France. The destruction of the tunnel would starve Rommel of ammunition.

The town itself looked Bavarian, with half-timbered houses painted in bright colors. The town hall stood on the leafy square opposite the railway station. The local Gestapo chief had taken over the mayor’s grand office and now stood poring over a map with Dieter Franck and a Captain Bern, who was in charge of the military guard on the tunnel.

“I have twenty men at each end of the tunnel and another group constantly patrolling the mountain,” said Bern. “The Resistance would need a large force to overcome them.”

Dieter frowned. According to the confession of the lesbian he had interrogated, Diana Colefield, Flick had started with a team of six women, including herself, and must now be down to four. However, she might have joined up with another group, or made contact with more French Resistance cadres in and around Marles. “They have plenty of people,” he said. “The French think the invasion is coming.”

“But a large force is hard to conceal. So far we have seen nothing suspicious.”

Bern was short and slight and wore spectacles with thick lenses, which was presumably why he was stationed in this backwater rather than with a fighting unit, but he struck Dieter as an intelligent and efficient young officer. Dieter was inclined to take what he said at face value.

Dieter said, “How vulnerable is the tunnel to explosives?”

“It goes through solid rock. Of course it can be destroyed, but they will need a truckload of dynamite.”

“They have plenty of dynamite.”

“But they need to get it here-again, without our seeing it.”

“Indeed.” Dieter turned to the Gestapo chief “Have you received any reports of strange vehicles, or a group of people arriving in the town?”